Renewed Push to Lure Notes/Domino Customers

Thinking the time is ripe to lure customers of IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino e-mail and collaboration platform to Microsoft’s Exchange and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Microsoft has upgraded its existing migration tools and will offer two new tools that analyze Notes applications and migrate data to WSS. As IBM touts its radically different Workplace product line while discontinuing support for older versions of Notes/Domino, Microsoft and its partners claim they are seeing renewed interest from customers requesting help migrating to the Microsoft platform.

Opportune Moment?

For many years, Microsoft and IBM have battled for the corporate e-mail and collaboration software market, with Microsoft pitting its Exchange Server and Outlook desktop and Web clients against Lotus’s Domino Server, Notes desktop client, and Domino Web Access. Exchange has long included tools to help Lotus customers move to the Microsoft platform, and Microsoft saw some early success enticing users because of its reputedly stronger e-mail capabilities and its integration with other parts of the Microsoft platform, such as Active Directory and Office. However, migrations later slowed to a trickle, largely because Microsoft offered nothing equivalent to Notes’ platform for collaboration solutions.